Washington, D.C....On Monday, August 10, at the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA), the original White House tape recordings made by former President
Richard Nixon will start being cut apart so that portions that courts have ruled are the private
property of the Nixon estate can be returned to it.

The National Archives, which has custody of the tapes, is in the process of opening those
to which the government is entitled. In the continuing process of reviewing the tapes, NARA
officials so far have identified approximately 820 hours of recorded conversations that must be
returned, which is approximately 22 percent of the 3,700-hour total.

As ordered by the courts, the National Archives will have to destroy or return copies it has
made as well as return the portions of the original tapes containing private or personal
information. But Archives officials are hopeful that the Nixon estate itself might preserve and
someday make public at least some of the private conversations. Archivist of the United States
John Carlin has formally asked the Nixon estate

to accept the return of the entire master preservation copy so that the Estate can
preserve one intact copy of the private or personal information. This would allow
the "political" conversations, which are included in those private or personal
materials, to be preserved in context with other conversations and possibly to be
made available to the public in the future.

President Nixon secretly recorded many conversations during his administration on tapes
that came to light during the "Watergate" investigation. The Presidential Recordings and Material
Preservation Act of 1974, which the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in 1977, requires
that the National Archives review these tapes, identify and return "private or personal"
conversations, and retain the rest, opening to the public material such as conversations related to
"abuse of governmental power."

Regulations promulgated under the Act describe "private or personal materials" as
materials that relate "solely to a person's family or other non-governmental activities, including
private political associations, and having no connection with his constitutional or statutory powers
or duties as President or as a member of the President's staff." The regulations further specify
that "political materials" can be kept by the government "only when those activities directly relate
to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional or statutory powers or duties."

In 1997, a federal district court directed NARA to provide the estate of the late President
"forthwith with all personal or private conversations identified to date" on the tapes and tape logs
and to destroy or return all additional private or personal material identified in the continuing
review of the tapes. A U.S. court of appeals subsequently affirmed the order, with which the
National Archives is complying.

Accordingly, archivists at NARA in College Park, Maryland, will physically cut out of the
original tapes all segments identified as private or personal in a painstaking process that could
take from three to six years. Despite the delicacy of the process, taped conversations that the law
allows to be made public will not be lost or harmed because the Archives can and is retaining
them on preservation copies usable with today's technology. Under a court-mediated agreement
with the Nixon estate, the National Archives will continue to release in stages recorded material
that the law allows to be made public.

For additional PRESS information, please contact the National Archives Public
Affairs staff at (301) 837-1700 or by e-mail.
Visit the National Archives Home Page on the World Wide Web at
http://www.archives.gov/.